Gina
Chon's not the story here. She may be at other sites and that's their
business. CJR should certainly be exploring the issue of sleeping with
your source. Here our focus is on McGurk except to point out that any
woman who has an affair with a married man who then leaves his wife
should be very wary of him being back in the same situation when he
first cheated with her. In other words, history tends to repeat.

What
changed? Why the sudden interest from the press in covering the
e-mails? Because reporters on the State Dept beat pressed State Dept
spokesperson Victoria Nuland about the e-mails.

QUESTION:
On another subject, this nomination of Brett McGurk, is it in trouble?
And can you confirm that the State Department is investigating
allegations of these emails between him and Ms. Chon of The Wall Street
Journal?

MS.
NULAND: Well, first of all, on the subject of the emails, they're out
there for everybody to see. I'm not going to get into emails between Mr.
McGurk and the woman who subsequently became his wife. With regard to
Mr. McGurk's nomination, I think you know that he spent the better part
of the last decade serving our country in and out of Iraq, working for a
Republican administration, a Democratic administration. He is, in our
view, uniquely qualified to serve as our ambassador, and we urge the
Senate to act quickly on his nomination.

QUESTION:
So obviously you're sticking with him. But can you confirm that --
because there are reports -- that the State Department actually has
looked into these alleged emails, or the allegations that these might
have compromised security or sensitive information?

MS. NULAND: I don't have anything to say on the emails.

QUESTION: Can I just follow up on that?

MS. NULAND: Yeah.

QUESTION:
Because, I mean, there are rules for Foreign Service officers to not
get into situations where you're blackmailed. There's sort of a sense
that you have to act morally. There are these regulations in your
guidebooks. And some people have lost security clearances over having
extramarital affairs. So I wonder why it is that this doesn't seem to be
-- factor at all into your decision in keeping this -- keeping his
nomination out there.

MS.
NULAND: Again, we consider him uniquely qualified. All of the necessary
things were done before his nomination, and we urge the Senate to
confirm him. Jill.

QUESTION:
Can you confirm that those emails actually came from the State
Department system, in -- within the State Department system?

MS.
NULAND: I'm not going to speak about the emails. They're out there for
you to look at. They're obviously very much available for anybody to
read.

QUESTION: Aren't you investigating how they were leaked? They're from your own system.

MS. NULAND: I'm not going to get into our internal issues here.

QUESTION: Well, why not? You talk about WikiLeaks all the time. Those were essentially emails.

MS. NULAND: Goes to your usual point, Matt, that we speak about --

QUESTION: What, the lack of consistency?

MS. NULAND: Yes. (Laughter.)

QUESTION:
Yeah. Oh, okay, great. When -- you said you did -- all the necessary
things were done before his nomination. What are those necessary things?
Was that like a security clearance and vetting and --

MS. NULAND: All that stuff.

QUESTION:
Well, I mean -- no, I -- what are they? I don't know. What has to be
done, not just in his case but in any nominee's case?

MS. NULAND: His nomination was managed in the exact -- with the exact same processes that we use for everyone.

QUESTION: Well, okay. What does that mean? I mean, does that mean that there's an FBI check or --

MS. NULAND: I'm going to refer you to the White House for how they do this.

QUESTION: All right. And then --

QUESTION: Just one more on that.

MS. NULAND: Yeah.

QUESTION:
If you do -- if you did do that, are you sharing this with members of
Congress who have severe problems with his nomination?

MS. NULAND: We always work with Congress on our nominees, and we're continuing to do that in this case.

QUESTION:
Can you confirm that there has been at least one meeting with -- on the
specific issues, not on the specific issues that were about the emails,
with people on the Hill?

MS.
NULAND: I'm not going to comment on the specifics of our conversation
with Congress, but in all these nomination procedures, we work with the
Hill on any --

QUESTION: Right.

MS. NULAND: -- issues that they have as our --

QUESTION: But are you --

MS. NULAND: -- nominees are being reviewed.

QUESTION:
But are you aware that this -- that people from the State Department
have gone to the Hill and/or have spoken to members of the committee who
have raised concerns about these specific issues. And by these specific
issues, I don't mean the more specific substantive issues that senator
-- people like Senator McCain have raised. I'm talking specifically
about the emails. Do you know if they have been -- if this issue has
been discussed with people on the Hill?

MS.
NULAND: Beyond saying that we continue to work with appropriate members
and staff on his nomination in support of it, as we do with all
nominees, I'm not going to get into details.

"Matt" above is Matthew Lee with the Associated Press. He reports on it here
and avoids mentioning Gina Chon by name. While I have stated that she
is not the issue, I am not going to render her invisible. I have no
desire to include the name of the wife cheated on but while I'm not
going to examine Gina Chon's motives or explore ethical issues on her
end or quote her in the e-mails, I'm not going to vanish her. When you
enter into a sexual relationship with a high ranking government
employee, especially a married one, you're risking exposure. As a
member of the press, that's something Gina Chon understood before she
ever went to Iraq. I mention Lee vanishing her because that's another
reason the story's not being covered.

During
the Iran-Contra hearings -- a detail Robert Parry and others always
ignore -- a journalist was outed (TV journalist) for knowing about what
took place and covering it up. It was in the news cycle for about 2 to 3
hours. Then the press did what it does best: Protect its own. I've
mentioned the journalists' name before and will again. But we'll not go
there today because I'll hear, "Do you always have to beat up on ___?"
from friends at ____'s network.

But a big
reason that the e-mails weren't covered was due to the fact that Gina
Chon is a member of the press. As a result, I will be rethinking my
policy here for next week. We're already in a gray area because I'm not
big on sex scandals. (And my family has had their own aired out in the
press.) But we didn't cover this as "Cheating husband!" I wasn't even
aware Brett McGurk was married when I learned what the Senate Committee
was hearing. We covered this as: You want to be a surpervisor but you
used government time and government equipment to go in search of a
bootie call, you then concealed the affair from your supervisor because
it was a serious conflict and now you're going to supervise?

I'm
glad that McGurk doesn't have a sexaul harassment lawsuit against him,
but reading those e-mails -- which are only four years old -- I'm not
real sure he's someone who understands work boundaries.

And
with no supervisory experience, I do worry that the tone he will set
will not be encouraging for women or for their safety. "Oh come on,
boss," you can hear a male staffer telling McGurk, "I just sent her an
e-mail about my blue balls. You know what that's like, e-mailing a
woman about your blue balls. I wrote her about masturbating too because
I saw your e-mails and realized that's how someone 'so f**king smooth'
does it." Peter Van Buren notes today, "Readers of my book, We Meant Well,
will remember an incident where an innocent romantic email from a male
State Department contractor to a female soldier kicked off a major
incident that ended up with the contractor being swiftly fired for
misuse of the official email system for personal use. If McGurk is
allowed to end up as ambassador, that would be only the latest in a
long series of double standards of conduct at the State Department. "

This
is not a minor issue and how sad, telling and pathetic that neither
female senator on the Committee bothered to show for the hearing.

And
into this already complicated environment, the White House wants to put
a man who can't keep it in his pants? Married less than 2 years and he
can't keep it in his pants? In a war zone and he can't keep it in his
pants?

It's not a minor issue. Can an Iraqi
woman meet with McGurk? And if she does -- remember social taboos are
on the rise in Iraq since the US declared war and put thugs in charge --
will this result in it being assumed she too 'got down' with the
'playa'? You can not put a man with that reputation in Iraq without
asking, "How will this effect Iraqi women?" The most obvious way is
they won't be able to interact with him for fear of how any interaction
would be interpreted. So no Iraqi woman can meet with him one-on-one to
share concerns. That doesn't bother the State Dept?

Well
why the hell not. Iraqi women were sold out under Bully Boy Bush and
for all of his pretense otherwise, Barack Obama clearly doesn't give a
damn about Iraqi women.

I would think how
this effects over half of the Iraqi population would be of grave
concern; however, we've yet to see a White House concerned about Iraqi
women since the start of the illegal war.

Huffington Post does a lousy job of covering the story.
We're focusing on issues here. Can he be successful in management when
he has no experience and a record of lying to his superiors and
breaking rules and regulations? We're not being Arianna Huffington in
the 90s sniffing through Bill Clinton's briefs. Maybe that's the only
way Arianna and her website know to cover a story? Sink into the
filth? Or maybe it's just more of her: 'Write a bad blog post so we can
say we covered it and we aren't really in the tank for Barack.' Chris McGreal (Guardian) covers
the story seriously and raises real issues. I don't believe that
McGurk passed on classified information but -- as Mike noted last night
-- that is a serious concern around Congress currently for other
reasons. My issue is that he's not qualified. That was the opinion
before the e-mails. He doesn't have the exeprience needed, he doesn't
speak Arabic, Iraqiya objects to him, Iraqi women will be left out of
the discussions but now someone who just four years ago was breaking the
State Dept guidelines is going to be put in charge of the largest US
embassy project in the world?

Chris McGreal
explains, "A Republican senator, James Inhofe, cancelled a meeting with
McGurk in a sign that unease about the emails could raise problems. Any
senator is able to put a hold on the nomination." Helene Cooper (New York Times) adds,
"Mr. Inhofe has not yet put a hold on Mr. McGurk's nomination, an aide
said" and quotes the aide, Jared Young, stating, "I don't think we'd say
we've reached the decision point yet." Jared Young tells Aamer Madhani (USA Today), "Until those issues are cleared up, he will not meet with Mr. McGurk." In addition to the hiding of an affair, Josh Rogin (Foreign Policy) notes
that McGurk "may have been videotaped while engaged in a sex act on the
roof of Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace with a different woman."
It's oral sex with him on the receiving end. And since March when Peter
Van Buren published a blind item, everyone has whispered that the blind
item about the blow job on top of the Republican Palace was one of
Brett McGurk's many sexual adventures in the Green Zone. Paul Richter has a good report for the Los Angeles Times.
Need a video report? As usual, you can count on Jake Tapper who is
able to confirm -- unlike all the other outlets today -- that the
e-mails are genuine. Click here for his video report.
Near the end, Jake Tapper explains, "And, George, even McGurk's allies
say now that with these e-mails out there, he will have to answer more
questions about this on Capitol Hill."